Definition
Quinzime (also rendered as "quindene" or "quinzième") is an archaic legal and ecclesiastical term with two related meanings rooted in medieval reckoning:
1. Fifteenths. A form of taxation or fiscal levy assessed at one-fifteenth of the value of a taxpayer's movable property, granted by Parliament to the Crown. In this sense, quinzime refers to the revenue or the rate itself.
2. The fifteenth day after a feast day. Under medieval ecclesiastical and legal calendrical practice, the quinzime marked a fixed procedural deadline — the fifteenth day following a named religious festival — used to calculate the return days of writs and the appearance terms of courts. This usage was integral to the medieval English legal calendar.
The term derives from the Latin "quindena" and the French "quinzième," both meaning "fifteenth." The dual meaning is not coincidental: the same root produced both the fiscal and the calendrical usage, and both appear in medieval English legal records.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Not entered as a standard English word in modern general use.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not entered. The term had passed out of ordinary English circulation well before the nineteenth century.
Editorial note: Quinzime is pure historical legal vocabulary. It has no meaningful life in modern common language, but it belongs in the legal dictionary because researchers encounter it in medieval English statutes, court records, and ecclesiastical documents where it carries precise technical meaning — either a tax rate or a calendrical marker. Confusing the two senses, or missing the term entirely, can distort a researcher's reading of a medieval source.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
As a fiscal term: The "quinzime" or fifteenth was a Parliamentary tax on moveables, distinct from other direct taxes such as the tenth (decima) or the ninth. Records will sometimes pair the two: "tenths and fifteenths" were frequently granted together in medieval English Parliaments, making the quinzime part of a broader fiscal vocabulary.
As a calendrical term: Court return days in medieval English practice were calculated from feast days. Common examples include "the quinzime of Michaelmas" (fifteen days after the feast of St. Michael, September 29) or "the quinzime of Easter." These return days structured the legal terms of Westminster courts.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval English legal records — particularly plea rolls, parliamentary records, exchequer accounts, and writs — will encounter quinzime in both its senses and must distinguish between them by context.
The calendrical sense is the more frequent trap. Medieval English court procedure organized writs, appearances, and returns around feast-day reckonings. A writ returnable "at the quinzime of Hilary" meant the fifteenth day after the feast of St. Hilary (January 13), placing the return around January 27. Failure to recognize this dating convention produces fundamental misreadings of procedural timelines.
The fiscal sense matters most for researchers in parliamentary history, exchequer records, and constitutional history of taxation. The statute reference in Black's — 13 Edw. I — points to the reign of Edward I and the fiscal legislation of that period, a critical era in the development of Parliamentary taxation. Researchers should be aware that "tenths and fifteenths" as a combined grant became a near-formulaic phrase in later medieval Parliaments, and the quinzime as a technically assessed fraction gave way over time to a fixed, conventional sum.
The term is unlikely to appear in any post-medieval source except as a deliberate historical reference. Its presence in a document is itself a dating and genre signal.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) provides a characteristically compressed entry, giving both meanings — "fifteenths" and "the fifteenth day after a festival" — and citing 13 Edw. I alongside a cross-reference to Cowell. John Cowell's The Interpreter (1607, expanded in later editions) is the natural companion source: Cowell was among the first English legal lexicographers to systematically gather medieval and Norman-French legal terminology, and his treatment of quinzime reflects the term's dual usage as it was understood by early modern legal antiquarians.
Black's entry is adequate as a pointer but thin as an explanation. It does not distinguish the fiscal and calendrical senses or explain their relationship, nor does it address the procedural mechanics of feast-day reckoning that make the calendrical sense meaningful to a researcher. The reference to 13 Edw. I is useful but unglossed — researchers should understand this as a reference to Edwardian fiscal legislation rather than a source that defines the term.
Historical dictionaries of this era generally perform better on Norman-French and Latin legal vocabulary when read alongside ecclesiastical calendars and the standard treatments of medieval English court terms.
Jurisdictional Note
Quinzime is essentially an English legal term with roots in the medieval common law and Parliamentary tradition. It has no equivalent usage in Scots law or in the civil law tradition, and it does not appear in American legal sources except as a historical curiosity. Researchers in Welsh, Irish, or colonial records derived from English practice may encounter it in contexts mirroring English usage.